Paul Taylor reviews Paul Taylor website

The price of fame is constant interviews - fine if it's fame that you're after, almost unbearably irksome, I'd think, if you're a working artist. When I met Paul Taylor on the morning after his company opened at Sadler's Wells, I was at least the tenth interviewer he'd spoken to that week, so I was very grateful for the patience and courtesy with which he answered my questions.

The big success of your opening night was Cascade [a pure dance piece in the same genre as Taylor's greatest ever hit, Aureole]. Several people I'd talked to were surprised to find modern dance so beautiful and joyous, and with no message, political or otherwise.

Yes, it's an idea that some people have, that modern dance has to be grotesque. Well, in the beginning, one of the reasons modern dance happened in our country was as a kind of revolt against the prettiness of ballet - they wanted to go back to something more basic. In the early days in America it was also very political - workers unite and that kind of thing - they felt obligated to have a message that said something; but like everything, fashions change; dance goes in a different direction, then it swings back.

You said in your autobiography (Private Domain, 1987), that you resented the success of Aureole, as it had been so much easier to make than many less popular works. Do you still feel that, and are you conscious when you're making a piece like Cascade that people are going to be comparing it with Aureole?

When you have a success, it makes you feel you've got to top it

Not really; I think that people who've followed my work over the years do make comparisons, but I don't have that in my mind when I'm working. But I don't think I'm alone in this - that when you have a success, and it becomes so popular, it makes you feel that you've got to top it; and since that piece was made, I feel that I've made much better strides; so although I realise it's value, and it's stayed in the rep, it's like a son that perhaps is going to take over the daddy, a baby that is taking up too much time. And the dance is so familiar to me that I want to see something else.

Another of your great successes, which I've never seen, was Orbs [a piece set to late Beethoven quartets]. Is there a chance you might revive that?

I don't know - it's possible - Orbs is another of the pieces that I've felt that I've done better since. Maybe other things have grown out of it, like, in a funny way, Sacre - Orbs is a full-length, it had an organised plot - it wasn't a linear story exactly, but each section had a little story that was connected to the main theme - it was a symbol, the solar system for the human life cycle; and in a way the plotting of that dance, before we started rehearsals, was similar to the plotting of Sacre - I don't do that very often. But it could be revived, and that's a thought, maybe I will bring it back into the repertory. Of course it was criticised because it used the last quartets, which I didn't know were so revered; but I think I would have done it anyway - they're beautiful!

I know your work is done by a huge number of dance companies - do you send people out to teach and produce the dances?

Yes, always. I don't do it myself - I have no memory, but I have a lot of ex-dancers, dancers who have gone through my company, who know the pieces very well, and they go and teach these things, with the understanding that if after a few days of rehearsal they don't think it's going to be done right... - but that hasn't happened.

How do you feel about ballet companies dancing your works?

Ballet dancers...bring their own performance skills

I've always thought if the choreography, the architecture, was strong, the piece would stand a lot of different interpretations. And although ballet dancers aren't usually trained in our technique, they bring their own performance skills and personal qualities to these pieces. I remember the Houston Ballet commissioned a piece [Company B] which I made on my company, and then I mounted it on them and they had the first performance, and I went down to watch and I was delighted.

Does it get more difficult to choreograph, over the years?

Well, it's always been difficult. Every piece that you do is a different kind of challenge.

And can you - do you - imagine a day when you actually stop choreographing?

Yeah, when I'm dead probably! Well, we don't know - but I'm not planning. You know, mid-way through each new piece I think, I can't do this, I've got to get out - but somehow, with the dancers, and the staff, and the people that expect something from me, I really can't quit.

Paul Taylor
Photo courtesy of PTDC

Since you mentioned the word, how much do you care about what will happen to your dances after you're dead?

Well, I reckon that as long as someone wants to see them and to do them, I should make an effort to see that that can happen, and I have, both in my will and seeing to copyright, seeing that it's very clear who owns things. I've had a lot of advice from lawyers, and we've learned from Balanchine's will, and Martha Graham's, where the pitfalls might be.

I know that you have a big project to record your past repertoire...

Yes, even in the early days I was aware that - I have a very short memory, I don't remember things well - I needed to either write them down, or have them filmed; in those days it was film. Now there's usually someone at rehearsals who's notating the piece, and then we always have video made of a new piece, partly so that new casts can learn their parts, and it's a way to keep dances alive.

So the film of the really early pieces in the Dancemaker video is of the original productions, with you dancing them?

Yes, I was in them.

And if someone wanted to revive some of your very early work, would you let them?

Oh, sure, if they could do it right, sure. Why not?

Do you find it more, or less, difficult to find dancers that you like, than you did say thirty years ago?

There are more dancers to pick from, and they're more highly trained

It's easier, because there are more dancers to pick from, and they're more highly trained, and my company is better known, so there are a lot more people wanting to come here. But often I'll take someone from our second, smaller company, or from our school.

Did you set up the school primarily to feed the company?

Well, no; it was a way to employ a lot of the dancers that decided to stop dancing with me, as well as a way to train new dancers. But it's always been a non-profit thing - the studios aren't so large, and I don't want to overcrowd the class, so that limits the number of students - we have about 30 students in the class, and only one class a day; but we hope to increase that.

And what exactly do you teach in the school? Your own technique?

Yes, if you can call it a technique; steps and combinations from specific dances are taught, and put into classroom form; a lot of exercises, warm-up exercises - but it's basically technique, to familiarise the dancers with my work.

But do you feel that there's now a 'Taylor' technique?

For me each new dance is like an adventure

Well, I've always tried to avoid that, because it seems like it's codified, or institutionalised ... for me, each new dance is like an adventure, and I'm trying to do something that I never tried before, and find movement that we haven't done before; but I suppose I have to admit there are things in common, something we can teach - ways of moving that make it different from a ballet class...

In your book you imply that when you first saw Martha Graham's dances they had a less refined, almost raw quality - do you think there's something been lost since the early days of modern dance?

Well, the style of her dances changed too over the years - it got more lyrical; but the early dances I saw, when I wanted to join the company, I just felt more related to. I loved the way it felt to do those movements. They seemed natural to me - I mean they were hard, stylised, you couldn't just get up and do them in the morning, but I felt kinship to her technique, and wanted to be involved. Rather than ... I never wanted to be a ballet dancer.

But you took ballet classes - you studied with Antony Tudor?

I studied with Tudor, and I admire his work

Yes, I studied with Tudor - and I admire his work - and I continued to take ballet classes as long as I was dancing, but I just never really wanted to be a ballet dancer.

So when Balanchine offered to take you into his company...

It was a great honour, it was an amazing thing to offer. Working with him was a good experience for me, and I think he was pleased with my work, but I just didn't want to switch horses; and I wasn't a highly trained ballet dancer - a lot of his work I never could have done.

But he might have made things you could have done..

Well there were things I could and did learn, but in the end I just had to say sorry.

Do you watch other people's dance?

Not much these days - I used to go to everything; these days I make an effort to see the dances of dancers of mine, who've been in my company and have groups of their own - I like to see what they do.

We don't get much over here but we've seen a couple of pieces by Lila York

Yes, I admire her work very much.

Do you have any formal, or informal, programme inside the company to encourage people to choreograph?

I don't know how you teach choreography

Lord, no - I don't want to get rid of them, I want them to stay! But if they like to do that, I'll sometimes pause in rehearsal and explain why we're doing that... just to make them aware of where my mind is going as I'm putting together a dance - it's not like a lesson, I don't know how you teach choreography, but just to make them aware..

One of the things that distinguishes your company is how easy it is to learn who the dancers are, because they're all so different: you do that deliberately?

Yes, I don't want carbon copies of each other; I've always liked to be able to identify... for the audience to be able to tell one dancer from another.

What is the effect of the inevitably increasing age gap between you and your dancers?

Well, in a lot of ways, that makes it easier. When I was dancing, and I was about the same age as the other dancers, being an authority figure was hard. But now there's a gap; I don't travel with them and I only see them in rehearsal, or in the theatre - so if I don't screw it up, there's more a chance for them to have a little more respect! I mean I don't believe in isolation, but leaders always have to maintain a certain distance, and they can do it by age, they do it by dress... and I'm thrown into this unrequested position of being leader - and so - I fake it!

I've read that you didn't want audiences at your work to be sitting there thinking - they should be experiencing it directly, and then think afterwards.

My message is nothing you can send by Western Union

Well, my message - like Humphrey Bogart said - is nothing you can send by Western Union. That is, dance is not about words - that's your problem - that's what writers have to do, and it's hard, I know, it's like describing a colour to a blind person. But I trust the audience's interpretative powers, and I expect that they can interpret my work through their own experience - it might ring a bell to something they already know - rather than spelling it all out. You know, I've always thought dance is poetic; and poetry, like dance, doesn't throw it in your face, the reader has to work - anything demanding you usually have to read more than once, and sometimes you have to read it two or three times, and I think some of my dances are like that.

Yes, I found that with Company B - the first time you see it it's just a lot of lovely songs...

You're just looking at the surface -

...and by the third time you hardly notice the songs...

...you're left with all those bodies on the floor.

And your next piece, Dandelion Wine?

It has music by Pietro Locatelli, a baroque composer, but ahead of his time. There are so many cadenzas in this piece, and I've always found cadenzas rather frightening to choreograph to, because they're technical show-offs, so I bit the bullet. It's due very soon after the company gets back, in Philadelphia; but it was made before the present tour began.

Let's hope we'll see it London, and long before another nine years go by.